It seems to me there are at least two aspects to backup:

1) Preserve important and/or irreplacable user data.
2) Allow quick return to work in the event of computer damage.

The methods for backup are somewhat different, unfortunately.  Here are
some things I've found useful:

A) Partition your disks/data.  On C drive, I tend to keep only "system"
files and data.  Windows, web browsers, utilities, etc.  Even with
modern operating systems, this is usually not very much (5-10G?)  It
can be backed up relatively unfrequently, since it's main purpose is to
get back the system quickly in the event of failure.  It doesn't matter
if you didn't get quite everything; you can get whatever is missing
again from your original source.  I use norton ghost, and back things
up to a separate drive (sometimes external, but also internally...)

On the USER drive, I keep non-system "Work" software (Eagle, MPLAB, AVR
Studio, etc, etc), and all the user data that I generate (including the
"My Documents" folder.)  You can separate the data and utilities, but I
don't.  I'm less happy with my backup procedures for this area.
Versioning becomes more important, and I'm not sure how to do it
cleanly.  Individual directories I copy periodically to other media
(USB drive, CDROM, etc), and the whole drive gets ghosted again.

A third partition holds all the crap.  Games, downloads, all the stuff
I probably don't need at all and can get off the net again if I really
want to anyway.  On my systems, this is by far the largest partition.
(no comments, please! :-)

If you have more than one computer, back them up to each other, or just
duplicate individual files.  I don't know how many places I have my
email archives (dating back to the 80s.)  I hope they match :-)  Note
that most user data you'll generate is REALLY tiny compared to the size
of modern disk drives (expcetion: pictures and video.  Sigh.  I'm still
not sure what to do with them.  Hey Russell?  How do you back up your
umpty-thousand multi-megabyte pictures?  Are there utilities
specifically aimed at this sort of backup?  I mean, things rapidly grow
too big to manage on an individual CD, but then content doesn't
actually CHANGE, either...  I guess it's a problem that around here CDs
tend to be less reliable than hard drives :-( )

Windows makes it tough, though.  Applications are forever putting
SOMETHING they need off in the windows directory, even if you install
them on a separate partition.  Many applications don't default to
saving per-user data in the My Documents area (or indeed, in any user
specific
area.)  Applications that deal with a path for "semi-private" data
(like the parts libraries for Eagle) are even rarer.  Sigh.  You'd
think there would be an application that you could run before and after
a major installation effort that would backup everything that was added
or changed, whereever it happened to be.   Or perhaps separately for
each disk.  (ok, I did an install.  Back up everything that changed on
the C drive only...)  (I think Norton has something that claims to do
this, but by efforts to get it to work on something like the
8-install/10disk full "Sims" installation were unfruitful (ok, maybe I
should have read the manual.)

BillW

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